Ground-based active optical sensors (GBAOS) have been successfully used in agriculture to predict crop yield potential (YP) early in the season and to improvise N rates for optimal crop yield. However, the models were found weak or inconsistent due to environmental variation especially rainfall. The objectives of the study were to evaluate if GBAOS could predict YP across multiple locations, soil types, cultivation systems, and rainfall differences. This study was carried from 2011 to 2013 on corn (Zea mays L.) in North Dakota, and in 2017 in potatoes in Maine. Six N rates were used on 50 sites in North Dakota and 12 N rates on two sites, one dryland and one irrigated, in Maine. Two active GBAOS used for this study were GreenSeeker and Holland Scientific Crop Circle Sensor ACS 470 (HSCCACS-470) and 430 (HSCCACS-430). Rainfall data, with or without including crop height, improved the YP models in term of reliability and consistency. The polynomial model was relatively better compared to the exponential model. A significant difference in the relationship between sensor reading multiplied by rainfall data and crop yield was observed in terms of soil type, clay and medium textured, and cultivation system, conventional and no-till, respectively, in the North Dakota corn study. The two potato sites in Maine, irrigated and dryland, performed differently in terms of total yield and rainfall data helped to improve sensor YP models. In conclusion, this study strongly advocates the use of rainfall data while using sensor-based N calculator algorithms.
Periodontitis is a multifactorial chronic inflammatory disease that affects tooth-supporting soft/hard tissues of the dentition. The dental plaque biofilm is considered as a primary etiological factor in susceptible patients; however, other factors contribute to progression, such as diabetes and smoking. Current management utilizes mechanical biofilm removal as the gold standard of treatment. Antibacterial agents might be indicated in certain conditions as an adjunct to this mechanical approach. However, in view of the growing concern about bacterial resistance, alternative approaches have been investigated. Currently, a range of antimicrobial agents and protocols have been used in clinical management, but these remain largely non-v
... Show MoreIn this work, the effect of atomic ratio on structural and optical properties of SnO2/In2O3 thin films prepared by pulsed laser deposition technique under vacuum and annealed at 573K in air has been studied. Atomic ratios from 0 to 100% have been used. X-ray diffraction analysis has been utilized to study the effect of atomic ratios on the phase change using XRD analyzer and the crystalline size and the lattice strain using Williamson-Hall relationship. It has been found that the ratio of 50% has the lowest crystallite size, which corresponds to the highest strain in the lattice. The energy gap has increased as the atomic ratio of indium oxide increased.
Spatial data observed on a group of areal units is common in scientific applications. The usual hierarchical approach for modeling this kind of dataset is to introduce a spatial random effect with an autoregressive prior. However, the usual Markov chain Monte Carlo scheme for this hierarchical framework requires the spatial effects to be sampled from their full conditional posteriors one-by-one resulting in poor mixing. More importantly, it makes the model computationally inefficient for datasets with large number of units. In this article, we propose a Bayesian approach that uses the spectral structure of the adjacency to construct a low-rank expansion for modeling spatial dependence. We propose a pair of computationally efficient estimati
... Show MoreIn this work , an effective procedure of Box-Behnken based-ANN (Artificial Neural Network) and GA (Genetic Algorithm) has been utilized for finding the optimum conditions of wt.% of doping elements (Ce,Y, and Ge) doped-aluminizing-chromizing of Incoloy 800H . ANN and Box-Behnken design method have been implanted for minimizing hot corrosion rate kp (10-12g2.cm-4.s-1) in Incoloy 800H at 900oC . ANN was used for estimating the predicted values of hot corrosion rate kp (10-12g2.cm-4.s-1) . The optimal wt.% of doping elements combination to obtain minimum hot corrosion rate was calculated using genetic alg
... Show MoreThis study addresses the issue of academic writing in English by comparing pragmatic argumentation in the writing of 40 graduate students studying at Iraqi universities (SSIU) with the writing of 40 graduate students studying at American universities (SSAU). In these 80 theses, six selected aspects of academic writing were analyzed: (a) paragraph structure, (b) length and construction of sentences, (c) organization of information in sentences, (d) vocabulary, (e) topic sentences, and (f) discourse markers. This study seeks to go beyond the traditional and often onedimensional analysis of pragmatics of argumentation in English academic writing to distinguish and describe different aspects of academic writing and their results when used by EF
... Show MoreWith the revolutionized expansion of the Internet, worldwide information increases the application of communication technology, and the rapid growth of significant data volume boosts the requirement to accomplish secure, robust, and confident techniques using various effective algorithms. Lots of algorithms and techniques are available for data security. This paper presents a cryptosystem that combines several Substitution Cipher Algorithms along with the Circular queue data structure. The two different substitution techniques are; Homophonic Substitution Cipher and Polyalphabetic Substitution Cipher in which they merged in a single circular queue with four different keys for each of them, which produces eight different outputs for
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